My husband is transported by music: a half-hour of vintage salsa refreshes his outlook like little else. Although he doesn't need to analyze the "why" to benefit from the practice, I looked into it. The reason that listening to music makes us feel good dopamine, the same pleasure chemical that encourages us to eat, sleep and…

“So, you’re cheating,” Mom said, sitting back against her chair. She looked at me, tapping her fingers on the chair arms for what seemed like a very long time. Then, she folded her arms in front of her chest. I waited for the other shoe to drop.

The nomadic life of my youth taught me four things: 1) be at home where you are; 2) let go when it's time; 3) settle in fast; and 4) forget there's anywhere else to be. This cycle puts you right back at 1) being at home where you are.

The question was posed casually to my mother by a woman not quite retirement age on Cape Cod, where Mom and Dad had retired to in the 1980s: "What did you do while you were overseas?" Here is her answer, which she wrote out instead of saying, leaving the record for me to discover some 40 years later....

I wished that Mom could have been with my husband and me during our visit to Amsterdam (too late to see tulips in bloom, but found some in a vase) and Paris in May, and especially when we visited Claude Monet's home and gardens .

When I was nine, I thought I’d become an archeologist when I grew up. We lived in Rome, and so the evidence that such a job existed was all around me. One of my friends had her birthday party in the Forum.